Just because he's been coaching for a long time doesnt mean he should make a lot of $$.

As already stated elsewhere Borges track record has always seen his offenses start off hot, then decline over his tenure which eventually results in his ouster from the program. Not exactly conducive to garnering a premium salary.

Also, when you consider that he tagged along with Hoke then yes, people myself included, tend to believe Michigan overpaid.

Most coordinators have 1-year contracts, but there has been a slow move to multi-year contracts for high-level coordinators as a way to prevent the yearly salaries from going hire and to keep them from jumping to HC positions and low-level schools.

Borges was given a 1-year contract for 2011, but after we finished 11-2, he was given a 3-year contract. His contract will be up next year and if he doesn't perform, then he'll obviously be out.

If you sort the USA Today table by conference, Mattison and Borges would be #1 an #2 in the conference respectively, although Borges is tied with Tim Beck (OC at Nebraska). The next on the list, making $95,000 less than Borges and Beck, is Luke Fickell and then you need to lop off another $30,000 to get to Everett Withers. Much beyond these guys (Tom Herman and Pat Narduzzi are the next two down), assistant salaries take a dive in the Big Ten.

"Funny isn't it, how naughty dentists always make that one fatal mistake."

Withers and Fickle are Co-DCs. Supposedly (and this is insane in my mind) one calls the base play and the other calls the coverage behind it.

But, I was wrong in not realizing they had two OCs (on top of Meyer not being affraid to call plays). I guess whatever works for them, but if half your coaching staff is coordinators, it seems kind of strange.

One calls the base front (so 4-3 Over, for example) and then the blitz, the other calls the coverage. I have no idea how that makes any sense. I'm sure they have some calls that can't be paired with certain coverages, but it sounds stupid to me.

But I don't like use of multiple coordinators on either side of the ball, so...

To be fair, after watching that secondary the last 4-5 games, it really shouldn't surprise anyone how stupid this is in practice. Still, it boggles my mind that they basically have 4 coordinators for two positions.

Did anybody stroll down to the end of the list by any chance? Poor Mario Price from Lousiana-Monroe. I have no idea what he's doing for them but it only pays 20k making his pay dead last of all assistants in college football.

To look at it another way - we could afford 35 Mario Price's for the cost of one Al Borges. And while I dont know exactly what 35 Mario Price's would do for the team, I have faith that hiring 35 people to coordinate our offense might actually be an improvement!

These coaches could probably get HC positions in Texas and make a good deal more money than they are at their positions. This is pretty much what scared me away from trying to make coaching a living though. Not only are you stuck moving around, trying your best to latch on to the right programs, and so on, these guys are also bouncing up and down from D1 to D2, taking pay cuts in efforts to move up, changing positions every 2-5 years, hoping they get lucky and that the guys around them do their jobs so it doesn't make them look bad by association, so on and so forth just so 15 years in can hopefully and luckily get a position job at a major conference university.

There is just so much uncertainty in that profession, and just because you're paid less, doesn't mean you're working less. The hours and stress are insane, it's not just insane on you but on your family. Some of these salaries, yes, they are quite nice. But when you only have job security for 1-3 years at a time and you have to take time off in between jobs, and if you lose one job you may never be able to work your way back, well, it's tough.

Does anybody know how much Hoke makes in reference to other head coaches? Is it possible that the reason Mattison and Borges are so high up is because Hoke makes less than other head coaches allowing for more money to be allocated to the other coaches? Or does Michigan just have the money to pay all 3 so well?

It's very interesting to see the comparison of how much the HC, OC, and DC make at the different schools. I was adding up a few of them myself but I wonder if someone has the time to hash out a chart...just sayin

And I know how this will come off given my position on things, but you are generally not going to pay exceedingly more for one coordinator than the other. There are reasons for this from a business standpoint and as a view from the outside.

But you look at this list, and the only real disconnects are Nebraska (Pelini is essentially the DC) and MSU (who just promoted from within and has co-OCs). Wisconsin, Illinois, and Purdue all make within 5k of their respective counterpart. Most others are very close as well.

You can hate it, but if you give Borges 300k less than Mattison, it looks obvious that you are favoring one side of the ball. And whether that is true or not isn't really the point, perception will drive that thought. And this isn't just a B1G thing, scroll though all the other schools and you see the same trend. You can ask a bunch of questions as far as is it worth it for this guy, should we get a guy that is worth an equal salary, is this the right way to do business, etc. But if Hoke and Brandon believe Borges is their guy, regardless on if he's the 4th best OC or not, you kind of have a certain obligation to pay him as such.

Which seems like a fairly decent chunk of change as far as being a performance-based salary. Without getting too much into the fire/keep Borges debate, I'm not sure many coordinators or ADs that would like more than that because there are simply so many other variables that come into play, including but not limited to: player performance, position coach performance, level of competition, etc.

Take the Big 12 for instance, would be nice being a OC there but would suck being a DC (obviously, you could make performance relative, but that's asking for trouble when people start looking if they are really worth that nation-wide, etc; and then taking performance based on making a bowl game, or winning the conference, or whatever, is just as based on those other factors and the other side of the ball as it is you, so there are issues presented there as well).

I'm actually OK with Mattison and Borges being highly paid. While I would rather Borges not be our OC at all, the fact that he is highly paid means that DB is willing to pull out the check book for good coaching talent.

Once we have some correlation between salary and talent, we will be highly competitive. It's much better than being one of the other college football programs that doesn't have the funds or appeal to reel in a top recruiter / coach.